Wife and I celebrated an early valentines day meal at Next. We had the Charlie Trotter menu a few months prior and looked forward to this menu as we started our Fine Dining experience a few years prior at Alinea. Being able to revisit the theatrics without the price tag was great, and being able to get the classics without feeling like it was a rehash at Alinea was nice. On this menu, the only item we'd had previously was the truffle explosion as it is frequently on the menus for cocktail tastings at The Aviary/The Office.
Of the courses, the only one I wasn't a huge fan of was the lamb, but it was still tasty and was our first experience with the scented pillows that slowly release aroma to impact the flavors of the meal.
The wine pairing was good, though I am not really qualified to determine if it was worth the cost, but I would agree that it enhanced my enjoyment of the meal. I was a huge fan of the nori liqueur paired with the matsutake dessert dish, as the flavor from one bloomed and carried into the other between sips.
Service was great, kind and attentive. Our service team was loose and familiar in a comfortable fashion, which was great as we are certainly not fans of stiff service.
Missing from my photos is the classic Hot Potato Cold Potato as it was delivered to our table and we were asked to eat with urgency due to the mismatch of temperatures in the dish. As someone who has had the truffle explosion at least three times – I think I'm a bigger fan of the potato.
by InRetrospeckt
3 Comments
Grant should consider bringing back everything from 2007-2013. Investors got involved and turned Alinea into a streamlined revenue maker. Unless anyone dined at Alinea during those years, nobody can truly understand how good it was. The food from back then could still be considered modern
I visited Next recently too and similarly thought the food was fantastic. My only complaint had to do with the structure of the service.
The idea behind the menu is to “bring you back” to 2005 when Alinea first opened. I never dined at Alinea until 2019 so I don’t have first-hand experience of it, but my understanding is that they presented these completely unheard of courses and left you to discover it yourself.
But at Next, they were providing all the answers when they served it. For example, the tempura shrimp on the vanilla bean was presented with the preamble, “Chef Grant wanted to explore how you could season a dish with smell so it uses a vanilla bean.” I would have preferred they serve it as they did in 2005 and let diners form their own impressions a bit more.
that looks so different from my meal last October and I’d be interested in that menu.